Instagram disables photo display on Twitter

Currently, you can see photos you've posted from Instagram on your Twitter feed, such as this image we posted today by Sohail Mamdani who's working on an upcoming piece for Connect about Hipstamatic alternatives for Android.

Instagram wants its users viewing images on its own service, not through Twitter.

On Wednesday Instagram effectively stopped its photos from displaying correctly on Twitter's website and mobile applications by disabling Instagram's integration with Twitter cards.

Twitter alerted its users via a status update:

"Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. Issues include cropped images. This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience. So, when users click on Tweets with an Instagram link, photos appear cropped."

So while Instagram images remain visible on Twitter today, though perhaps incorrectly, users may soon be directed from Twitter to view Instagram photos only via its own service. The New York Times reported today that Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, has confirmed Instagram will entirely disable its images from being displayed via Twitter. Systrom also confirmed the move is only directed at Twitter by stating that Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare and other similar services will not be affected.

It seems competition between the two social networking services is heating up. Instagram's move to keep its images off Twitter comes just shortly after Twitter introduced more photo-centric features and a Twitter employee spilled the beans that the service will introduce photo filters, á la Instagram.

Comments

Very short-sighted approach. Next they'll produce viruses to shoot each other down. Trust the greedy humans to use every tech advancement to hurt each other with! Are we looking at a new kind of space war?